What’s holding back animal agriculture in North Dakota?

Advocates for animal agriculture in North Dakota hail Justin Quandt and the fashionable hog barns his household constructed close to Oakes for instance of what’s doable within the state.

The Quandts don’t personal the hogs of their barns; they’re owned by an “integrator” in South Dakota that pays the Quandts to accommodate the pigs and supply the labor till the pigs are market weight. The integrator offers the feed — typically shopping for corn from the Quandts — and decides when to choose up pigs for market.

“Our duties are to maintain the barn heated, cooled in the summertime, pay the electrical energy payments, search for the sick ones to deal with, deal with the animal well being, after which order the feed once we want extra feed, after which he pays us the hire per pig area,” Quandt mentioned.

However for extra North Dakota farmers to benefit from the alternatives that animal ag presents, Quandt says the business wants to beat the “stigma” related to massive scale hog barns and as a substitute see the worth in diversifying and utilizing manure to advertise soil well being and save on fertilizer prices.

Quandt, who additionally raises cattle and farms with brothers and uncles close to the South Dakota state line, provides a number of credit score to Amber Boeshans, the chief director of the North Dakota Livestock Alliance, with serving to to navigate the method of getting the financing and permits wanted to make the 2 4,800 head barns doable.

Boeshans provides this evaluation of animal agriculture in North Dakota:

“We’re about the place South Dakota was 15 years in the past.”

South Dakota has double the variety of beef cattle that North Dakota has, and North Dakota has dropped out of the highest 10 beef producing states, although a few of that could be associated to the 2021 drought that withered pastures within the state.

North Dakota is much behind South Dakota within the variety of hogs and dairy cattle within the state.

South Dakota has greater than 2 million hogs whereas North Dakota has simply 148,000, in response to the Nationwide Agricultural Statistics Service, a part of the U.S. Division of Agriculture. North Dakota has simply 15,000 milk cows whereas South Dakota has 170,000.

The North Dakota Livestock Alliance began in 2017 and promotes “responsibly rising all forms of animal ag throughout the state,” Boeshans mentioned because the group on Sept. 28 held an occasion in Fargo to advertise elevating pigs within the state.

However that development has been sluggish to return and ag leaders within the state level to a wide range of elements:

• Anti-corporate farming legal guidelines.
• Lack of livestock and dairy processing. 
• Prohibitive native ordinances.
• Misconceptions about animal ag.

In an interview with Agweek on the 2022 Large Iron farm present at West Fargo, North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum mentioned neighboring states are “clobbering us” due to North Dakota’s anti-corporate farming legislation.

Burgum mentioned it’s apparent that it’s “not aptitude.” As a substitute, “it must be crimson tape and regulation.”

However Burgum mentioned creating a contemporary, environment friendly livestock operation requires important capital and North Dakota’s anti-corporate farming legislation, now 90 years previous, make that almost inconceivable.

The North Dakota Livestock Alliance doesn’t take a stand on that legislation and different ag coverage.

“We’ll comply with the legal guidelines of the state,” Boeshans mentioned.

However she provides: “Have I had tasks not be capable of perform in North Dakota due to that legislation? Sure.

“And it’s not simply pigs; it’s been extraordinarily laborious on dairy.”

“It’s a restrict, there’s little question about that,” mentioned Craig Jarolimek, a Forest River, North Dakota, hog producer. “Nonetheless, there are methods to get round that,” he mentioned, by creating some partnerships to usher in some exterior capital.

Boeshans the capital required, typically tens of millions of {dollars}, means “sticker shock” that have to be overcome.

North Dakota has been reluctant to vary its 90-year-old ban on company farming, although it has been expanded to permit cousins to work collectively as part of a partnership.

In 2015, North Dakota legislators handed a invoice that will have exempted hog and dairy farms from the legislation. Farmers Union led a referral effort that led to 76% of voters voting to reject the exemptions.

“It’s going to take the residents of North Dakota” to vary it, Burgum mentioned.

South Dakota had an analogous legislation, often known as “Modification E,” till 2003, when the case South Dakota Farm Bureau Inc. v. Hazeltine led to it being struck down.

What some feared can be a company takeover of South Dakota ag hasn’t occurred, mentioned Bob Thaler, South Dakota State College Extension swine specialist.

He sees the change and development of animal agriculture as offering alternatives for the subsequent technology of farmers.

“There’s a number of household farms that contract feed for Smithfield,” Thaler mentioned, referring to Smithfield Meals, in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, one of many massive pork processors within the area.

“That is permitting that 20-something to return again to that farm or ranch,” Thaler added.

Mark Watne, president of the North Dakota Farmers Union, stands by the company farming legislation.

He factors to the furor over a belief linked to Microsoft founder Invoice Gates shopping for land in northeast North Dakota.

“All people’s mad as a result of Invoice Gates purchased land,” Watne mentioned. “They assume altering this company farming legislation goes to make that any higher? It is simply going to extend that factor that everyone’s upset about.”

Watne mentioned what is actually wanted is livestock processing within the state.

He says, sure, South Dakota does have looser company farming legal guidelines, nevertheless it’s been that state’s willingness to attempt to appeal to companies like cheese processing which have constructed that state’s dairy business again up.

“South Dakota developed cheese first, as a dedication to supply processing for the milk into cheese in South Dakota. They wanted extra cows, so the cows got here,” Watne mentioned. “We let our dairy processing vegetation die away.”

When looking out for an organization to associate with, Quandt mentioned he was instructed that their farm on the southern fringe of North Dakota was too removed from the Smithfield plant in Sioux Falls.

“I priced out different firms, and all of them instructed me you are type of out of our vary for trucking the pigs right down to the processing plant,” Quandt mentioned.

Boeshans mentioned she would like to see extra dairy processing, and a few dairy and livestock producers are taking the initiative.

“There are a number of livestock producers which might be placing up their very own smaller processing vegetation,” Boeshans mentioned.

Watne mentioned the state wants to assist extra.

“There’s this fixed, fixed competitors to draw enterprise,” Watne mentioned. “So the state must step up and appeal to the processors.”

Randy Melvin desires so as to add animal ag to his farm about 35 miles west of Fargo, partially, he says, to supply a possibility for his youngsters to be concerned within the farm.

However he was thwarted by ordinances in Howes Township in Cass County that made siting a hog barn inconceivable.

The North Dakota Farm Bureau took up Melvin’s trigger, taking the township to court docket. On July 30, 2022, North Dakota East Central District Decide Wade Webb dominated that most of the township’s necessities, similar to setbacks, had been illegal.

“The Township doesn’t have authority to manage an animal feeding operation’s look, burden on streets, nor basic compliance with the Township’s Complete Plan,” Webb’s ruling mentioned.

Tyler Leverington is the legal professional with Ohnstad Twitchell legislation agency in Fargo who’s dealing with that case and a few different comparable circumstances in Ramsey County, close to Devils Lakes, North Dakota.

He mentioned many townships “received offered a bundle of ordinances, as soon as upon a time.”

“I am not simply speaking animal feeding operation ordinances — they received an entire packet of ordinances once they purchased this stuff from a few of these engineering corporations,” Leverington mentioned.

The ordinances haven’t modified as a result of they haven’t been challenged, he mentioned.

“However when you might have townships that both are adversarial to, whether or not or not it’s sure people, or animal agriculture extra usually, it simply can create an enormous mess as a result of the allowing surrounding growing animal agriculture is an costly time-consuming course of,” Leverington mentioned. “I believe, over time, that’s been an enormous obstacle.”

Leverington additionally works in Minnesota.

“If you happen to requested most North Dakotans, ‘Who has extra crimson tape and overzealous regulation, North Dakota or Minnesota?’ They might simply snort and say, ‘In fact Minnesota does.’ However the actuality is, in the case of animal agriculture, it’s far more tough to find an animal feeding operation in North Dakota than it’s in Minnesota,” Leverington mentioned.

Leverington mentioned farmers perceive that guidelines and requirements should be in place, however can’t be onerous.

“Individuals ought to keep in mind that the laws on the township stage are above and past a really in depth allowing course of on the state stage,” Leverington mentioned.

Quandt mentioned their software with the North Dakota Division of Environmental High quality was 188 pages lengthy for his or her two barns. These barns are in neighboring townships, certainly one of them with solely a handful of residents.

Quandt mentioned there was some concern about truck site visitors from a resident of 1 township however in any other case there was not a lot of a problem.

One of many missions of the North Dakota Livestock Alliance is to fulfill with county and township officers to assist reply questions on fashionable animal ag and attempt to get forward of these issues.

The Alliance was not in existence when Randy Melvin made his try and convey a hog facility to Howes Township in 2015. And he hasn’t given up.

“Earlier than the day I die, I need to have animal ag on our farm,” Melvin mentioned.

Coping with guidelines and laws could also be simpler than altering folks’s attitudes about massive scale animal ag — the “stigma round it,” as Quandt says.

He has tried to be clear about his hog operation. For biosecurity causes, guests will not be allowed contained in the barns, however he had an open home within the barns earlier than the pigs arrived, and a digital tour is on the North Dakota Livestock Alliance web site.

His level is {that a} fashionable hog facility and manure dealing with system doesn’t have the odor that some folks affiliate with animal ag.

Standing exterior certainly one of his barns, “Yeah, you understand they’re there, nevertheless it’s not burning your nostrils or something,” Quandt mentioned.

For Quandt, the manure that gathers within the pit of his hog barns is piped to close by cornfields and diluted and sprayed by way of the irrigation system. “So there’s no honey wagons dragging, spilling manure round. It’s all self-contained.”

And by his math, the variety of vehicles that come out and in of their barns, that are double the dimensions of a typical hog barn, is similar variety of journeys required to make a corn crop on one quarter of irrigated land.

The concerns about odor and site visitors, “a number of these reactions are plain not understanding,” Jarolimek mentioned.

There could be a number of misinformation unfold about livestock operations, he mentioned.

Thaler mentioned North Dakotans can look south for a way livestock can enhance the employment base and high quality of life in rural areas.

“We don’t have rivers of manure working down the ditches,” Thaler mentioned. “We don’t have these plumes of odor which might be killing folks.”

Advances in barn building and manure dealing with have made livestock operations into higher neighbors.

“You drive previous it, and also you’re not even going to know they’re there.”